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About The west shore. (Portland, Or.) 1875-1891 | View Entire Issue (May 1, 1884)
THE WEST SHORE. 134 Tlmir fltnoricnce with the whites had not Deen a . i. . r.t otv.k. and pleasant one. They JioU stolen 4imu., - lor thin their country had been invaded, their warriors .lain, their women made captives, their villages burned and many of their horses taken away. The next year they amply revenged themselves upon the helpless euii m.nu wlw. iwissed through their country. From the Modoo Btnimint tliey were as well justified in attacking indiscriminately all white men they encountered, in view of the death of their warriors and the destruction of their villHL-os. as had these men to invade their country because of the loss of a few Btock, and attack indiscriminately all the Indians they could find, without regard to their guilt or innocence of the depredations which had been com mittal. Modocs were killed wherever found, and they mlnliiitixl liv killinir white doodIo wherever found. This - - - rj idea should bo borne in mind when reading of the horri bio events of the following year. Harry L. Wells. THE GREAT NORTHWEST. V. IT was not my intention when I began this series of paers to account ho fully for the origin of "The Great Northwest" as I have beoii doing, but have uncon sciously drifted back far into the prehistoric. Neverthe less, it is important to a clear understanding of the work of evolution that is still going on in this region. Nature's two jKiwerful workers, fire and water (igneus and aque ous), although mutually destructive of each other when brought face to face in conflict, yet work harmoniously in building up islands and continents. Let us still give a free wing to' fancy and watch the giant forces that are forming and maturing our earth. Knowing that certain causes uroduce enrtuin vffaMc, keeping in miud tho analogies of Nature, and reasoning by a comixirisoii of the unknown with the known, it. not, aftr all, so great a stretch of the imagination, look ing through tho glasses of science, to describe how our anet was formed. Professor Agassi was wont to say that give him a single vertebra of fish, reptile, bird. quiru.i or man, aided by his knowledge of compara tor anatomy ami natural history, he could forthwith Sf'.Stitnr1 fn-erthegeolo- 7 " 7 uw of the great natura1 force, can build a world. r;.,i l.;i I t . . , ' "V w -asassiz COU d miM the annua fnm a Billgle jobt spinal column or baeklRme. Science. Hinnii ia ..... l .i 1U1 , I 'wwn tne present aud the IU mag.o fingers lift the curtain aid we gaze upon tlio subhmo scene ..f .i. i . " fell'0 UPU th it birth. A seething ,XHn of Z V i on iu axis t th J! r ? ' W,urUll8 1 : " Ut U,e ' thousand miles upon tl fiery bill . " i 1 M 8 on all ' 8 boiling, like niol iron, now it wildly leaps forth as if to embrace the fierv ciouas; now lemiug, uuummg, u&o uio xiger lor a fatal spring, it sends its are-capped DiUows into the very bosom of the burning sky ! JJut I despair. It is not for mortal pen to picture a scene so sublime. The TartaroB of tho Greeks, where the fcmbs PhlcgoiLou 10us im waves of fire, is but a Chinese fire-cracker when com. pared with it . There is no day here now, for the sun's rays can no more be seen in the blinding light of melted metals than the dim beam of a tallow dip in the midst of the electric ' ight There is no night here, to bring rest and repose with its cooling dews and soothing shades. There is no autumn with its "rainy season," no winter with its frees ing blasts, to mitigate the burning heat Where, then, was all the water that is now contained in our oceans, laices ana rivers r it naa not yet been formed not a jingle drop. Its elements (hydrogen and oxygen) were everywhere; but water can form only under certain conditions, and these conditions were not present There were no coal measures then, no lime stone, for" all the carbon was far away from the earth. All the stones and all the metals were then in a like condition, resolved by the beat into their original ele ments, and by the heat driven off into space in spite of gravitation. We take no note of time as we gaze upon our embryo planet, for no dial has measured its hours, no pendulum has paced its seconds. The heat radiates into space, reducing the temperature of our globe at its surface. As the ice forms on the bosom of a lake, so rock on the sur face of the shoreless, fiery sea. The rocks form, break into fragments by the tossing of the fiery billows, re-form in a greater mass, again to be crushed and broken liie sheets of ice in the wildly rushing torrent Bound and round the globe the molten waves incessantly roll, toss ing, tumbling up the embryo crust into craggy islands, against which dash the fiery waves and congeal into roci and girders, binding the islands into continents that reach forth toward each other until the fire is covered and its glory hidden from our view. It now ceases to shine as a star in the heavens. Henceforth it mnsi depend upon other bodies for its light, and finally, whet miles in depth of crust have been formed, its heat also. Professor William Denton, wno lost his life last year in his devotion to science, in an effort to make plain the process by which our earth has arrived at its present advanced state, reverses the order of events, lmaguung the earth to be gradually heated until it assumes the condition of vapor. I like this method of elucidatioa and will imitate him. We will imagine that an infii"" command has gone forth to "Heat up!" With wh interest we watch the process and observe the attending phenomena. Already the tropical regions have beeow uninhabitable, and a general migration to the north everything bavins animal life ensues. The polar i melta like snow beneath our balmy "Chinook" ""'"""u xaa temperate zones uewun there is another migration. The fish of the lak 13